Federal Act
on Foreign Nationals and Integration
(Foreign Nationals and Integration Act, FNIA)¹

¹ The for­eign spouse and un­mar­ried chil­dren un­der 18 of a per­son with a set­tle­ment per­mit are en­titled to be gran­ted a res­id­ence per­mit and to have their res­id­ence per­mit ex­ten­ded provided:

a.

they live with that per­son;

b.

suit­able ac­com­mod­a­tion is avail­able;

c.

they do not de­pend on so­cial as­sist­ance;

d.

they are able to com­mu­nic­ate in the na­tion­al lan­guage spoken at their place of res­id­ence; and

e.

the fam­ily mem­ber they are join­ing is not claim­ing sup­ple­ment­ary be­ne­fits un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 2006⁶³ on Be­ne­fits sup­ple­ment­ary to the Old Age, Sur­viv­ors’ and In­valid­ity In­sur­ance (SBA) or would not be en­titled to claim such be­ne­fits due to fam­ily re­uni­fic­a­tion.

² In or­der to ob­tain a res­id­ence per­mit, it is suf­fi­cient to re­gister for a lan­guage sup­port pro­gramme as an al­tern­at­ive to meet­ing the re­quire­ment set out in para­graph 1 let­ter d.

³ In the case of un­mar­ried chil­dren un­der the age of 18, the re­quire­ment in para­graph 1 let­ter d does not ap­ply.

⁴ The grant­ing and ex­ten­sion of the res­id­ence per­mit may be linked to the con­clu­sion of an in­teg­ra­tion agree­ment if there is a spe­cial need for in­teg­ra­tion in ac­cord­ance with the cri­ter­ia set out in Art­icle 58a.

⁵ After a law-abid­ing and un­in­ter­rup­ted peri­od of stay of five years, spouses are en­titled to be gran­ted a set­tle­ment per­mit if the in­teg­ra­tion cri­ter­ia set out in Art­icle 58a are met.

⁶ Chil­dren un­der twelve are en­titled to be gran­ted a set­tle­ment per­mit.